NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the largest ice comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers. It has a mass of 500 trillion tonnes. Its mass is estimated to be a hundred thousand times that of a typical “comet found much closer to the Sun.”
The comet’s estimated diameter is 80 miles across. It is greater than the state of Rhode Island in the United States, according to NASA.
Astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein discovered C/2014 UN271 in archival pictures from the Dark Energy Survey at Chile’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. It has been extensively researched since then.
“This is an amazing object, given how active it is when it’s still so far from the Sun,” said the paper’s lead author Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa Macau.
“We guessed the comet might be pretty big, but we needed the best data to confirm this”.
Comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to measure 60 miles across, held the previous record. The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Survey detected it in 2002.
Largest comet ever
According to NASA, the nucleus of the comet is nearly 50 times larger than those found in most known comets.
The comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is speeding toward Earth at 22,000 miles per hour, according to the US space agency.
Tip of the iceberg
There’s no reason to be concerned because it won’t come any closer to the planet. NASA noted: “It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won’t be until the year 2031.”
“This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system,” NASA quoted David Jewitt as saying. He is a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is also the co-author of the new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“We’ve always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is,” Jewitt added.
On January 8, 2022, the crew used Hubble to snap five photos of the comet, according to NASA.
The news of asteroids and meteorites barreling toward Earth reminds us of the satirical Hollywood film ‘Don’t Look Up’. Two astronomers warn of an approaching comet that would destroy the planet Earth in the film. But the warning is ignored, resulting in the apocalypse.
However, reality differs significantly from the film. There is little doubt that space agencies all around the world send out alerts and remain vigilant.